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These Stress Balls Are Really Stressing Me Out

There was not a drop of flour left in the house, save for the dusting (2 inches thick in some places) on the floor, the tabletop and our clothes. He was asking us to run to the store to get more flour– because, “he was out of product.” I soon learned that all the salt, cornstarch and baking soda was gone — and he wanted to know if he could use the Stevia.

The flour was poured into a used, empty plastic water bottle, via a funnel that kept toppling over when it was full of flour, and then dropped into a balloon. The balloons were tied, decorated with sharpies, and sold as “stress balls” for $1.25.
As cumbersome as it was, this method beat the flubber-filled rubber glove hands.
Look — this is our merchant, five years ago, in the striped shirt, helping with production back then. It was almost 9:30 at night and I rallied the boys together to make one last ditch final effort to crank out more product.

The second merchandise item was a collection of ordinary rocks, simply spray-painted. Decorate-your-own Pet Rocks, which sold for $1.00.

During the sale, in the school yard, Mini-Mall was a frenzy of success. Money-pouch carrying kindergartners, and dollar-fisted elementary school children
couldn’t spend that green fast enough. I saw one little girl with a stack of $5 bills stuffed between her fingers.

The total earnings were over $350. The profit would have been more, but, they ran out of product. Couldn’t supply those rocks fast enough…75% of the profits go to Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD).

I love these events, more so if I have nothing to do with the prep haha. We run them at several levels through the year. Year 6 Maths do stalls two weeks in a row and Year 10 do a whole week dedicated to working in teams, preparing a product an ad campaign, a budget etc. When I did something similar with some Year 8s some years ago, I took them, with their earnings, to a local variety store where they worked in pairs to buy items for ‘Shoeboxes of Love’. I love the mental picture you paint of the softdrink bottle funnel toppling over! Oh I have so been there. Good luck with the clean up and well done boys!